Bleeding Out
by Charlotte88
Summary: One-shot. Set series thirteen onwards. "Anyway, sometimes the ending can be more of a beginning: go back to the start and repeat the variation on the theme."


_This exists in a world where Harry doesn't leave. Just FYI._**  
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**Bleeding Out**

When he dances with her, he feels things.

When he dances with her, there's a little part of him, somewhere deep in his chest, that feels a little tight.

And at first he wants to blame it on indigestion, or too much champagne. But the longer he looks at her, the worse the feeling gets. Until he can't look at her at all.

Nearly five years they've been friends now. That's half a decade. He's looked at her before. Plenty of times. Too many times. (But the less he thinks about that, the better.) The point is: the pain is new.

What he doesn't yet know, as they sway and revolve on the spot, is that now it's arrived, that pain isn't really going to go away. Especially when she's this close, and he can smell her and feel her and hold her like that.

But he tells himself it's the champers (must have been a cheap one) and keeps dancing to Lenny Kravitz (seriously, don't they have any proper music?!) and ignores the things he feels.

Their story doesn't begin until after.

**i.**

She thinks she understands grief.

Thinks she knows how it feels, how it works. After all, she spends all day every day around it. She watched her mother die, some twenty years ago. She watched her father walk out of the door (which is a whole other kind of grief, but whatever, it still counts). Her nan died and her dog died and even her childhood rabbit was eaten by next-door's cat (she tried to give that rabbit a post-mortem, you know. Tried to dissect him with a Stanley knife. She thought her dad was going to have a heart attack when he found them).

The point is: she thought she knew what grief was. And then she has a phone call from Leo and her whole world comes to a grinding halt.

And it turns out that whatever she thought she knew was fucking crap.

People say it hurts, losing someone you love. But they never say how much. For when she hangs up the phone, she legitimately feels that her heart might actually be torn in two. It _hurts_ so _badly_. And the sobs which rack her body are huge and painful and tear at the inside of her lungs and burn her eyes with their accompanying tears. And she crosses the office and curls up in his chair behind his desk and inhales him and stays like that for hours, until she feels too numb to cry and too exhausted to move.

So to get him back, just a day later, to lay eyes on his harsh, bloody, battered features and feel his strong arms encompassing her so wholly, so completely, shocks her to her core. Her confession to Leo just hours previously, her confession to herself (for that was the first time she's ever uttered aloud what neither of them have ever dared say), have left her vulnerable and exposed and she cries into his shoulder and whispers that she hates him.

And he holds her tighter, and whispers that he knows.

**ii.**

It scares her, living with him.

The ease with which they settle into a routine is mildly terrifying. It's almost too easy. Too uncomplicated. Like it's a habit they just can't quit.

It's like they're both waiting for something to happen; stuck in a stalemate because they're both cowards and she hates it. And they're spending twenty-four hours a day together now and it's all a little much when he cooks for her and she accidentally bumps into him the hallway when he's only wearing a towel (it totally _was_ accidental shut up) and she can hear him softly snoring through the wall.

Then they're eating a takeaway and it's all so fucking _domestic_, with the flowers between them and he keeps nudging her hip with his toes and then he _looks at her like that_. Like he could just rip her clothes off. And there's this fanciful fleeting fibre of her being that wants to say to him: _fine, just kiss me already_ (because, let's be honest, it's not like she hasn't thought about it, about his tongue in her mouth and her hands finding every inch of his torso that they possibly can).

No. She has to stop this. It's too dangerous. There's too much at stake. And it's not like she doesn't know it's too soon. But his eyes are still fixed upon hers and _oh god_ she has to look away before she does something stupid.

So she smiles, her gaze falling to the plates in front of her, and she picks them up and leaves the room because she realises that's probably safer but she can feel his gaze on her back and that's when she knows. Knows this could be trouble.

But she needn't have worried. Because he's gone two nights later.

(It doesn't occur to her that sometimes habits are broken for a reason.)

**iii.**

It's six months later when they first have sex.

If this was a movie, there would have been rain and big romantic declarations of love and happily-ever-afters.

But it isn't, so there aren't.

It's just hunger, and desperation, and an all-consuming desire (that is brought about by an alcohol-induced lowering of inhibitions). The kisses are fast and hot and heavy and after she comes down from that dizzying, crashing sensation that _nothing_ is ever going to be the same again, he says that as good as it was, it's probably best they forget it ever happened.

And she nods and agrees because of course he's right and, oh yeah, they're cowards remember?

Except it happens again a week later. And the night after that. And they agree that it's nothing. Casual. Tension-relieving, if you will. But definitely not _something_. Casual, he says over and over.

She hates that word. Casual. Because if they were casual, she would tell herself that she doesn't care so fucking much about him and she wouldn't remember how his mouth felt against her burning lips and how he made that noise at the back of his throat, or how his fingers pressed into her skin, or how he twisted individual blonde curls around his finger like a lifeline, because if she didn't care then none of that would matter.

And that's why, when they do it again (because how were they ever not going to do it again?) she chooses to focus more on the ceiling above him than his face right in front of her, until he collapses onto her, panting, and for the first time finds her cheeks with his fingers until she can't focus on the ceiling and has to stare straight into his eyes, and he mutters her name under his breath like it's one of those other words he can't hold in any longer.

That's when the world shifts a little.

**iv.**

They get into a fight. It isn't bickering or arguing like before. It's standing on opposite sides of the room screaming and yelling and wanting to claw at each other and inflict proper damage.

She's fed up with all of it, with his insistence that _they're casual and why should it mean anything and what, she doesn't want him to date other people now? _and she only has these eight hurtful little words in her head, words that she screams at him so viciously she scares herself a little: _you're not going to be anyone's happy ending._

But it turns out that those words are how she makes him lose.

He visibly slumps and his reply causes a strange ache in her chest: _god, don't you think I know that?_ and she wants to cry at the look in his eyes and she reaches a hand to his shoulder and tells him she's sorry, she didn't mean it, she's just mad at him, but he tenses and pushes her away.

She fights his resistance until both her hands are on his cheeks and they're kissing like they haven't kissed before.

She pulls away though, because of the whole thing about how she's a coward (notice a pattern here?) and he looks at her sort of funny, something like _so close but yet so far_ and _where's the thrill of the chase gone_ and hidden away in a box never opened there's _you, why does it always come back to you_.

She walks away then. Because she has to.

(But that doesn't mean she won't come back).

**a conclusion**

They've stopped telling themselves that they'll never love each other.

They still fight pretty regularly and have sex even more often (she's come to learn that the make-up sex is more than worth the arguments) and she can't really sleep without him there anymore and he's moved all his clothes into her wardrobe and his toothbrush stands beside hers in the bathroom.

And perhaps she was wrong when she said that he'd never be anyone's happy ending. Because maybe, after all this, he is hers.

Anyway, sometimes the ending can be more of a beginning: go back to the start and repeat the variation on the theme.

Basically, who cares if they're only with each other because it's easy? Or because they're there when no one else is, and no one else would have them anyway? (And, as it goes, neither of those things is true).

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**Yeah, so I promised mari27990 that the next thing I posted would be another chapter of 'There Is No Fight...' and I am _thisclose_ to finishing that, but this popped into my head this morning and I couldn't settle until I'd written it. So there we go. **

**I hope you all like it. :)**

**Charlotte xxx**


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